“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
This is the preamble of the Constitution. It is the mission statement of the Constitution. It is the spirit of what the constitution is supposed to uphold. These are the bullet points in the Constitution; we, people, form, more, perfect, union, justice, insure, tranquility, common, defence, promote, welfare, secure, blessings, liberty, ourselves, posterity, ordain and establish. It is not only up to the politicians, judges, and lawyers to debate these words, we the people can too.
People can say a lot about these words. They can warp, twist and intentionally change their true meaning. But they cannot change the order they were written in. I believe our founding fathers intended to make the most important things come first in this new experiment in government.
We, the citizens, want to make a society of unified states, the ‘union’, that we all can coexist in. The level of that existence is supposed to be ‘perfect’. To do that we need a society where we make laws to create the ‘justice’ we seek. In my opinion, a ‘perfect’ union, would be equality for all. There are a lot of us working towards that, but there are also lots of us who are not.
What is domestic tranquility? For me, that means going to the grocery store and not expecting to die. It is being able to live on minimum wage. Domestic tranquility is the right to be any sexuality you choose to be and not be discriminated against for it. To be Black, Asian, White without fear from your neighbors. It is the right to your body and your privacy. Domestic tranquility is the right to be Democrat or Republican, Islamic or Christian, and not be attacked or killed for it. It is the right to live in a peaceful society with justice. To me, these are principles of a ‘perfect’ union, with ‘perfect’ justice, in a ‘perfect’ life.
I don’t understand why there is such push-back against the core fundamentals of our Constitution. Why is the first amendment allowed to trump, full pun intended, the preamble, the very heart of who we want to be? Why are people allowed to say stuff that is hateful and inciteful and have no accountability in the anonymous world of the internet?
Why am I allowed to say Nigger? Spick? Gook? Retard? Shitbag? Ect. ect.
Why am I allowed to throw these hateful words at someone in a hateful manner should I wish to? Why would I have virtually no accountability over it? I don’t feel this falls within any intent of the preamble. Any kind of hate speech is not free speech.
I know there are hate laws and legislature against what I am talking about. But if not enforced and left unchecked, those words build into problems. Those problems build into the ‘news’ headlines of today. Here are a few consequences stemming this issue; BLM vs. ALM, QANON, MAGA, ANTIFA, etc., and all those other abbreviations.
Black lives do matter. To the black community, I hear you even though I do not know what it is like to live in your shoes. I have a notion, mentally ill people are shunned and discriminated against too, but not to the extent the black people in the United States have been for over 400 years. So many people do not hear or care, they use their white privilege to push back with stuff like ‘All Lives Matter’, to nullify the issue black communities are face with today. Many white people do not want to see the injustice. Too many are too afraid or ignorant to acknowledge their fortunate privileges, positions, and perspectives in this world.
Then we have the QANON lies and misinformation allowed to run rampant in the last 4 years. It saddens me people cannot think for themselves anymore. MAGA is used as a joke or pun to combat its use as an anger trigger against another person when they see it. Make America Great Again. I do not feel America is even close to being as great as it was before the Trump years. Then you throw Antifa in the mix. A small but growing minority feel they must resort to violence to be heard. Using violence instead of words means there is an issue not being listen too. Similar but worse is the amplified voice and violence of the right-wing extremism of groups like the ‘Proud Boys’, the ‘Boogaloo Boyz’, and other white extremist groups. Then they innocently try to hide behind the ex-president’s double entendre words. The bullshit of plausible deniability built into them.
The very fact all these things are ‘newsworthy’, and we are talking about it, means the system is not working towards that ‘perfect’ union of ‘justice’ and ‘domestic tranquility’. Why are some things allowed to be said only to be hurtful and harmful toward minority communities of any stature? I do not agree with it. Just look to other counties for examples on how to fix it. Some are unbelievably bad but some particularly good. We must want that change for all of us for it to get better. But we cannot or we will not it seems.
And talk of change leads me to talk about the second amendment. It is just as distorted as the first. Why does a person’s right to bear arms, which I don’t disagree with, infringe upon another person’s right to live and breathe in a society that will not kill them for a misunderstanding, a moment of anger, an ‘alleged’ illegal act, going to school, going to the grocery store, or sitting in your house?
Race, religion, sexual or political beliefs. These are all things we have the right to believe in, but it always seems that a person with a gun says otherwise. The victims of any shooting lose all their rights the instant someone else pulls the trigger on their one right. And that does not seem ‘right’ to me. Again, another pun but it does not seem funny.
Sure, there are laws and forms and procedures and legislature and ‘and’. It always seems to be the ‘and’ added to protect us from these things, yet here they are in the news, and here I am talking about it.
The system is broken. Why does this amendment, as it is now, have the right to trump, again, pun intended, the spirit of the Constitution? It allows an individual the right to strip others of all their rights with a pull of a trigger. I don’t understand why some people are okay with this. Why?
But what about common defense? That is written down too, correct? Yes, this is the reference in the preamble expressed by the 2nd Amendment. But ‘provide for a common defense’ comes after ‘domestic tranquility’. It does that for a reason. Living a peaceful and productive life in a tranquil setting was viewed as more important and as a higher priority by our founding fathers than a right to abused and misuse words and guns to strip away another person’s liberty.
American citizens can bear arms, I absolutely agree with that, but I do not agree with the way we are doing it now. I see no reason for a firearm designed to kill a human to be legal outside the military or police forces. I think Americans can protect their liberty with revolvers, shotguns, and 5 round capacity bolt or lever action hunting rifles just as well. Let the police and the military have semi-automatic pistols, large-capacity magazines, the semi-automatic/automatic rifles, and nobody should have sub machine guns or machine guns but the military.
These are not designed for anything but to kill other humans. I do not see the need for those weapons to be in a civilian’s hands. That does not work towards that ‘perfect union’, justice, or domestic tranquility listed before the defense.
Then comes the general welfare clause. The welfare of all Americans, the young, the old, the poor, and the rich. This too is becoming a broken ideal. There is too much money going out of the Government coffers and not enough coming in. Too much of our taxes are going outside our borders for the wrong reasons. To much of it is being misused to keep the rich, rich.
The wealth gap is growing too far, too fast. The poor are being suppressed by corporate lobbyism too much. Union memberships are down to their lowest level in 80 some years. Workers stopped have no one to protect their interests.
The minimum wage is not realistic anymore and has not been for a decade. What the dollar can buy has been steadily decreasing with no wage increase to offset it. Why did my mother have to work 3 jobs to feed, cloth and provide shelter to her kids?
The ultra-rich collectively are not helping the society, if anything, they are bleeding it like what a vampire does to their victim. The big money vacuum of corporate capitalism at work. Reaganomics is a failed ideal still embraced today.
All these principles, the ‘Blessing of Liberty’, must work together while not infringing upon the other. That is a tall order to fill. That intent has long been lost since it was first written in 1789.
All this dysfunction in politics and society does not bode well for that ‘Posterity’ mentioned in the preamble. What kind of future are we really making for our children’s children? Can we, as Americans, do our part in preserving that foundation enjoyed by our ancestors? I do not know anymore. I question where we are at right now as a nation. Sadly, this is becoming more of a human issue than just a national one.
Global warming is real, yet people are more concerned with the status quo than improving things for future generations. To ears are closed to science. They hear the dollars instead of the data. The world around us is dying, it is a huge death knell to warn us, be we as species refuse to hear it.
I see the searching for answers within our government. The call for earmarks to come back to add some political grease to the axle of governance. The call for the end of the filibuster, an attempt to sidestep ‘the political avoidance’ and the red tape of politics to push forth new policies. I think they are both good ideas and are needed. Some form of governmental experimentation must happen soon before a small mass of heavily armed people makes those experimental decisions for all of us, good or bad. That can only lead to an open armed conflict in the streets.
The dysfunction in the government legislature is a direct representation of our social state. How do we bring functionality back into our society and our politics? It seems no one wants to listen to another person anymore, it is all ‘TLDR’. Everyone is being pushed into echo chambers dictated by search engines and data collection. Something is amiss. We all realize this. And we are all trying to go about solving our problems differently.
Some people think strong-arm tactics are the only way forward and, to be honest, I see their reasoning, I just do not agree with their approach. Our government must be able to improve the system; things are going to have to change soon. Or more people and more things are going to start breaking more often and more violently.
In the meantime, the blood of patriots and tyrants will have to continue to flow to renew that tree of liberty. We as a people are the only ones who can stop this with the help of our politicians, judges, and lawyers. God help us all if too many clogs in the machinery fail us too often. That leads me to one final question. Will we, as a society, as a nation, survive if we continue to go down this dysfunctional path?
Buckle up for the age of digitally enhanced social discourse.
Life ReStarted 